Amy Klobuchar calls for Syria no-fly zone

Add Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar to the growing list of lawmakers calling for United States to set up a limited no-fly zone in Syria near the Jordanian border to protect rebel forces training in the area — a tactic the administration has yet to embrace.

“Once you’re there on the ground, you see what is happening in Jordan — one of our best allies in the Mideast — where you have literally thousands of Syrian refugees flowing through that border every single day,” Klobuchar told POLITICO.

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The senator, who visited the region in April, noted that there are 500,000 refugees on the border, “and only a third of them are in the camps, and then you’re projected to see up to maybe a million refugees by the end of the year.”

Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes Thursday told reporters that the U.S. is prepared to help the rebels fighting the repressive regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. But the senior White House aide demurred on whether the U.S. would set up a no-fly zone. “People need to understand that a no-fly zone is not some type of silver bullet,” Rhodes said Friday at the White House briefing.

“The hope here is that by joining with allies, by at least providing some arms and a no-fly zone for the rebels, that there will be some chance here of moving forward,” said Klobuchar. “Because when you talk to these refugees, they are literally just the saddest stories you’ve ever heard about what happened to them and what happened to their lives.

“And the point is Assad is now using chemical weapons against his own people, and that clearly was the line in the sand that the president drew,” she added. “And so it doesn’t surprise me at all that he has come to the conclusion, in a very difficult and challenge situation, to decide to send some arms and joins some of our European allies and others in sending some arms to the rebels.”